Welcome to Part Three of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish great content consistently to attract traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration stage of this process. We will show you what makes an expertly configured site different, and what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when all is fully set up and configured, you can automatically start getting new traffic simply by regularly posting content to your web site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by business owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive worldwide and are exploring every advantage they believe will increase their competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have a significant competitive advantage from the word “go”.
The Difference Is In The Way Your Site Is Configured
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the differences:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence and an automated online business marketing tool!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special kind of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a story.
A Semi-True Story …
Everything is going just fine in the widget factory when the machines suddenly comes to a halt.
No one can figure out what’s wrong and so the floor manager decides to call in an expert.
Promptly after arriving, the expert heads out immediately to the main control box. After staring at the wiring diagrams for less than 2 minutes, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer from his shirt pocket and makes a single tap near the top-right edge of the unit.
Immediately, everything springs to life once again.
The manager is filled with joy as he thanks the expert, who leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of $5,000.
Bordering on outrage, the factory manager rings the expert. Why were they charged so much for less than five minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
How much money did the widget factory stand to lose when production stopped working and no one on the business had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent building up the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WordPress website fully configured so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social networks and dozens of other web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your site?)
Although the solution to many problems often seems quite easy once it’s been implemented, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring some of the site settings for clients. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for certain things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party services you need to set up to get specific outcomes
- Which internal and external settings need to be configured to make sure processes will work to plan, etc.
(Generating new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
Although this part of the WordPress traffic automation system may not seem so technically difficult, it can be quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as simple as installing a piece of software, clicking a button, or tweaking some options and settings in your admin area … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a process that involves your web server, your WP site, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplistic flowchart showing the activities involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these steps.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for installation purposes. We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is beneficial traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This stage of the configuration process, therefore, is about planning for bad and good traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like integrating spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page error redirections, etc?)
After checking your web server settings and configuring these, the next step of the configuration phase is to set up various external sites.
External Sites
The basic idea of choosing external sites is that all of your content will get published from one central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will get automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external services to your traffic system, content linked back to your website will get automatically added to search, social and aggregator sites. Your site will then receive exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of the external sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts before configuring your WordPress site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you notify Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with essential information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
Once your Google Webmasters account and site data have been set up, this information can be used to integrate and automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add tracking code to WordPress using plugins and feed data instantly to other online applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your account has been with Bing are set up, you can use your information to automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As explained in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you plan to grow a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate this into your automated web traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and bring new traffic to your site)
You will need to have already set up your various social media accounts in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media pages and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have set up accounts with all the main social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can You can syndicate your content to lots of social bookmarking sites. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we will cover some of these tools in greater detail during the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social sites you can syndicate your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free plans, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add a feed from your website …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your own RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your own web traffic blueprint. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up external site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site’s settings.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog For Traffic
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification systems available to website owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Screen)
As stated in the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have intentionally configured your site settings to prevent search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services text box
By default, only one service is available …
(Writing Settings – WordPress Update Services)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content displays to users in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s choice to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your site to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting here as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to notify various update services when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, leave this box unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks enable WordPress to publish posts with search engine-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s SEO-friendly URLs …
(Configuring permalink URLs)
If you need help setting up permalinks in WordPress, see this step-by-step tutorial: Improve Your WordPress SEO Using Permalinks
WordPress Traffic Generation Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No web site is completely immune from cyber attacks.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to botnets and hackers.
For more information, go here:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages easily indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Once properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their website using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social features to their website with WordPress plugins.
Many social sharing plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which visitors can unlock by sharing your page.
Theme Settings
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the layout and design of your site, some themes also include options for improving search optimization and site navigation structure for faster indexing, add tracking, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes have built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of WordPress themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your website is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
WordPress Traffic Automation – Additional Configuration Steps
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes the following:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you do any kind of business online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Does Your Site Comply With All Legal Requirements?)
We have written a detailed article about the importance of having a compliant website here:
WordPress Post Categories & Tags
Post categories & tags help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better organize and index your website.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post categories and tags should be reviewed and set up during the Website Planning Process.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories that have been set up.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A site map that displays all of your pages and posts to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools find your website content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Although Google will index your site just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO can provide – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Another Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on hyperlinks pointing to an incorrect destination on your site, they will normally be presented with an error page (known as a 404 error page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found page allows you to recover web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found error page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is post new content on a consistent basis to automatically bring more traffic.
The process of expertly configuring a WordPress site, however, is quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and external web properties …
(Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take many website developers months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To continue reading this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping business owners learn how to grow their business online inexpensively using a WordPress-driven website and proven online marketing methods.
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